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2013.06.20 - Use Your Imagination
It is a rather cloudy mid-morning, the unusual summer wedding providing a respite from the relentless summer heat. There is the promise of rain in the air, and the anticipation for its refreshing presence is palpable all throughout the park The weather is perfectly fine for Keith who, as someone covered in fur, isn't as fond of the summer heat as he used to be when he was fully human. Nevertheless, exercise is something someone in his profession can't neglect, and so he has jogging along the paths in the park for his daily route- shirtless and wearing shorts and sneakers. The stares haven't gotten any better, but he hopes that at some point they will stop mattering altogether. Slowing down to a trot in his cool-down period, the feline finally sits down on one of the benches, wiping at his fur with his towel and breathing heavily. "Alright... I'm all warmed up..." he pants. It felt good, the blood rushing through his veins, his body waking up. His thoughts kept going back to the mystical woman he had met, and the stone in his pocket. His recent conversation with Booster Gold about his powers and training had made a mark, and he had come to realize that he needed as much training as he could get. And, after all, she had offered some pointers. It couldn't hurt. Taking the stone out of his pocket, he held it in his palms and concentrated on it... "er...Hello? I hope this works..." It's like a ping going off in the back of her head, a minor summons from the magic worked into one of her communication stones. She hears Vorpal's voice and senses a brief flash of his presence. Looking up from her research, she purses her lips, considering whether or not to interrupt her work -- not because she doesn't want to help him, but because the research is extremely important, if she's going to truly cleanse that old theater. People, however, are generally more important. So, she pushes away from her desk and pads silently into the living room, where she settles casually into a chair and touches her fingers to the crystal at her throat to better establish connection. Before her eyes, though unseen to anyone else, his form coalesces in a shimmer of kaleidoscopic energy. Before him, several miles away, her form, at least her head and shoulders, does the same for him. The blonde woman smiles. "Hello," she greets simply. "Is everything well?" The young man is clearly taken by surprise by the manifestation, nearly dropping the stone. "Oh wow.... this is awe----er, hello! yes, everything is well. Did I call at a bad time? I hope I didn't." He says "Wow... and to think I used to think that videophones were fancy...." Amanda's blue eyes dance some, though they're paler in the illusion than they would be in the flesh. A little more ghostly. "I know, right? And best of all? No long-distance or internet charges." It's true, but she's kidding, nonetheless. Her head cants faintly, now, her expression growing curious. "So. What's up?" "Well... do you remember mentioning that you could give me some pointers in acrobatics?" The cat says, looking at the image still mesmerized. "I've realized that I need the training if I'm going to be effective. I've discovered something that I can put to use, but only if I get better at gymnastics." "Ah..." Amanda nods to that. "I think we were speaking more of mystical training, but yes. I do have acrobatic training, as well. Have you a suitable place to practice either?" She doesn't imagine he has a lot, but she can't take him to Westchester and she doesn't have the space herself. Very few are invited into her inner sanctum, most of the family. Keith ponders this, and then nods "There's the warehouse I've been living in...." Amanda's ears rise faintly and she nods. "That could work, if it's largely abandoned." She gives a wry smile. "Iim assuming it is?" The cat grins his trademark Cheshire grin "they wouldn't let me sleep over there if it weren't. It's at 3383 Park Ave, in the Bronx... see you there?" Amanda gives a light nod. "By all means. I'll be there shortly." She severs the metaphysical connection, her image fading out as she levers herself to her feet and goes to check Google maps for a street view of the place so she can open a portal safely. Who needs a car? Keith, on the other hand, doesn't have any fancy means of transportation other than his feet. Racing across the rooftops once he exits Central Park takes him some time. "Alright alright gotta move gotta moveeeee..." he takes a leap between two rather far-apart buildings, and is glad that he is now a feline. He doubts a human could have made the jump. Amanda does the feline the courtesy of delaying her arrival for a while, uncertain of just where he's coming from. Transit's good, but she always plans on at least a half-hour to an hour to get anywhere when she takes -- not that she takes it often. Thus, it's quite likely the lad will arrive home before the sorceress makes her appearance. She doesn't pop right into the warehouse, however, stepping out, instead, onto a back lot. She wears her hood and combat leathers, now, because she's not entirely certain what she's in for in this abandoned neighborhood. The shimmer of magic can be seen overlaying her leathers. She's taken some time to weave a more permanent mage-armour spell into the things. Satisfied the place truly is abandoned, she starts looking for the most likely ingress into the building. "Over here!" That's Keith's voice, coming from... the rooftop? He peeks over the roof and grins "Sorry... the front roller is rusted shut, but the skylight works fine." He says, and suddenly there is a glowing purple ladder attached to the roof and leading down to street level. "I always come in through the roof," he explains. The ladder's a nice courtesy, though the woman can fly. Still, acknowledging it, Daytripper grabs hold of the construct and hauls herself up. "I wondered about the roof," she admits. "You didn't strike me as a ground-floor sort of fellow." Keith maintains the ladder while she climbs, and chuckles at her remark "People like me usually don't come in through front doors. I'm too freakish for your average bear, you know. The only reason I go out in public as much is because Booster insisted I should. And... well... I might be going to school at that Academy, if they find a scholarship for me. So I need to get used to being.. stared at." Daytripper doesn't know Booster at all. But, she can empathize with the cat's predicament. "Well, if you want, we can work on your illusion spells and stamina, but your friend is probably right: If you're going to make a habit of being out in public places, you'll need to get used to the attention. Unfortunate, but true." Keith groans, dismissing the ladder once she is on terra firma. Or ceiling firmus, at least. "It... sucks, you know? I didn't use to look half bad before this happened. What am I supposed to say to guys to ask them out on a date? That no, I don't eat Purina?" he smirks. "I did go to the open house.... I stuck out like a sore thumb, but Miss Frost didn't seem to mind." He leads her towards the skylight. "Attention sucks. At least, the unwanted kind, no?" he starts opening the panes. There is a catwalk directly underneath. Hilariously enough. Daytripper lands easily on the catwalk from the window. She nods to her host. "It does. I wish I had a good answer for you. My closest friend in the world is blue and fuzzy." And they've done more than just date, but she doesn't say it. "Fangs and a tail. So, I do have a good idea what you're talking about. At the end of the day, do you really want to be with someone that doesn't accept you for you? He doesn't. Cherish the people that do -- whether they're platonic or something more." She chuckles dryly, now. "Not that such platitudes help with the day-to-day, I know. I'm sorry. Nightcrawler and I have been through too much together for me not to know that. I could introduce you to some folks at another mutant academy I'm familiar with, if you want, but I can't promise you it would be any easier there. I only know that mutants are usually far more sanguine about such things than most people." "It's partly about the accepting bit. But the other part is that I tend to be a risk. I can't hide my looks for too long, so that means any villain can attack my boyfriend, had I one. Or if they weren't civilians but supers, I'd be risking their civilian identities. Ptuagh, it's a mess," he smirks, waving it off "Sure, I like to meet people. Especially ones that aren't surprised to see me. There was this girl I met the other day... can see energy. Isn't that amazing? She helped me stop a bank robbery." He walks down the catwalk towards the lower level, whcih has been cleared of everything except an old mattress, a broken mirror and some newspaper clippings pasted to the wall. "Channel," Amanda smiles, recognizing the girl's description. "She's a remarkable young woman, yes." She's actually taught the tall redhead a few tricks, if only peripherally. She descends to the main level and looks about, tracking the criss-crossing of the catwalks, rafters, and support beams. The poor condition of his living situation causes her to frown faintly. It's an unfortunate fact that she's seen more than one poor, young mutant living in such squalor. Something's going to need to be done about this. "I'll see what I can do about setting up an appointment for you." In the meantime... "Right. How about you show me what you can do, hmm?" The feline looks around, taking the size of the room in "Right... this is what I was thinking..." he says, and he crouches for a second, before jumping up. For such a short start, the leap is high- which is probably due to his feline side. But as he reaches the apex of his jump, he extends his hands and, out of thin air, a glowing purple bar appears, suspended in mid-air. He uses the bar to swing himself forward, leading with his legs. He lets go and the bar disappears as he sails through the air, and another one appears as the arc of his flight, which he uses to pull himself up and crouches upon the bar, in mid-air. "... I basically can be my own jungle gym. So to speak. I think I could use this in combat, even to travel, really. I sort of pull off basic moves easily, probably because of what I am... but I don't really know how to do all of the crazy advanced stuff." Amanda arches a brow, now. "How important is the crazy advanced stuff?" she counters. "I've learned lots of crazy advanced stuff, over the years, but the basics are what I use most." Having watched his trick, she gets the hang of it fairly quickly, though she requires a spell. Thus, flicking her hands and muttering softly, she causes a series of glowing force shields to coalesce in the shape of bars and ledges. Then, she launches herself into the air, first to the lowest and gradually to the highest, swinging and using the most basic of trapeze flips to get from one pipe to another before she finally lands on the catwalk above him. A cat, she's not. But, her circus training is evident. "Et voilà. Nothing complicated about that. In fact, the fancier you get, the more you sacrifice speed and risk an over- or under-shoot of your destination... which can be fatal, if you're not careful." She smiles, gesturing again so that her shields disappear, before she launches herself off the catwalk to hover in the air and drift toward him. "It's as much a philosophical consideration as a stylistic one. Ask any traceur," i.e. a parkour enthusiast, "and they'll tell you: Getting from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible may require leaps, tumbles, rolls, in dazzling combination, but it won't usually include hand-springs, aerial twists, and back-flips. It's actually the fundamental difference between formal Parkour and Free-running. The latter concentrates on tricks, the former on efficient movement." She crosses her arms over her chest, legs piked together as she hovers. Her smile is visible in the shadows of the hood. "So, I put it to you: Which style to you prefer?" The cat watches her, blinking. Niiiiice. He tilts his head at her question "Well, the most efficient one, really. Showing off is all really well and fine for exhibitions, but I'm after consistency and expediency. What I meant by the fancy stuff was that... quite honestly, I've never had to do anything of that sort. I've seen people blaze across rooftops as if it was nothing- I still can't quite get there. But I *can* run across a tightrope... unfortunately there isn't a miles-long tightrope around town." He grins at this. Amanda laughs at this. "Sure there is," she says with a wink. "They're called telephone lines." Not, mind, that she'd recommend it. "Though they're probably more trouble than they're worth." She considers, now. "You have the ability to create your own tightropes, however. What is the scope of the constructs you can create? And how easy is it to do so -- particularly when there are bullets or force beams flying at you? That will be your main limiting factor. "I can make simple shapes easily without thinking hardly about it..." as he says this, he demonstrates- his perch vanishes and he lands on his feet, and around him the air fills up with figures that blink in and out of existence-- cubes, rectangles, circles, hoops, spheres, narrow bars... "Right now, though... my limit is this...." Everything vanishes and a fifteen feet by fifteen feet glowing purple cube appears in the middle of the room. "I can't make anything more massive than this, nor make it longer or taller than fifteen feet. I've tried.... when I do...." he looks at the object, and it breaks apart. Or, rather, it seems to shatter into a thousand tiny square bubbles that float upwards and vanish in less than a second. Still, Amanda considers, nodding to what she sees. "And you can conjure under pressure?" she asks again. This is important, and something she will ultimately drill him in. "The trick, I think, will for you to get accustomed to seeing the world in terms of simple shapes and figuring out what the best way to bridge those shapes are. Most alleys in the city aren't more than 15 feet wide, and you can leap fairly far. Your real challenge will come when you encounter buildings with sufficiently different heights as to impede your progress. How are you at climbing?" "Well, if they're porous enough, I can help myself with these..." Keith says, drawing his claws as he extends his fingers. "If it's smooth marble, or metal... if I can't find purchase, I can't get up." Amanda chuckles now. "Keith... you can make your own hand holds as you go. You should be able to scale anything." She taps her chin lightly and then flashes him a grin. "It seems to me what we really need to do is teach you how to use your imagination," which is a hilarious thing to say to a Cheshire cat. "Not to create the complex illusions your fighting persona might use as a conceit or calling card. We all have those, and that's fine. But, to put the least number of resources your have available to the most efficient use." She slowly floats down to the floor. "I'm going to let you in on a little secret, my fine feline friend. As a child, I wasn't educated like other kids. I've never been to school. At least, not traditional school, and I've never had a lot of sustained use for mainstream society. It bores me." She chuckles dryly. "Everything I know, from reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic, to my acrobatics and my magic, I learned from my mother and the folks we called family. We were essentially gypsies, always on the move." Actually, they really were gypsies, but she doesn't want to confess that quite so openly. Most people wouldn't believe it of the fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde, in any case. "And every gypsy I've ever met knows one thing for certain: Life fights dirty. So, if you're going to survive it, you need to fight a little dirty, too. This means learning to use anything and everything it throws at you." The cat looks mischievous "So the Roma fight dirty?..." his green eyes glint with mischief "So instead of an anvil on Electro, I should have really just hit him with a glowing bat to the crown jewels?" the mischief makes him look every inch the Cheshire. But then the mischief mellows out a little. "I never really knew my father, and my mother... she died when I was little. My uncle took me in, but I was never really part of his house. I've often wondered what it must be like to have that sort of feeling. Even when I was leading the boys around to jump on the Padres--" the leading gang in Morrisania at the time --"wasn't really a family sort of thing." He looks at the wall. 'Keith, you can make your own handholds as you go.' He jumps up and one handhold appears. As he starts climbing up another one and another one appears--- and that's when a limitation becomes obvious in his power: he seems unable to create more than three small objects (such as handholds) at the same time. However, he quickly gets over the issue by keeping one foot in the air and the handholds moving. In a few seconds he's almost reached the ceiling. "Roma, tinkers, drifters, nomads, street rats, carnies..." Amanda chuckles now. "Take your pick. None of them use acme anvils." She shrugs however. "You, however, need to do what works for you. And family is what you decide it is. Who you decide it is." She listens to his story, and watches him begin his climb. She says nothing as she notes his initial hesitation when his power limits appear, and how he circumvents the problem. She smiles and nods once. He's getting the hang of it. As he nears the ceiling, her eyes track to the nearest support beams. "I'm going to put up a bunch of targets for you," she says now. "I want you to get to them as quick as you can, hit them, and move on. I don't care how you hit them, only that you physically do." Marking out likely, and particularly inaccessible spots, she begins conjuring. The targets are little more than floating disks, no more than 8 or 10 inches in diameter. The float in the air and are scattered about the warehouse. There's one on the beam opposite him. From there, they flicker into existence just outside of easy reach from the catwalks, other support beams, the floor, and even in the middle of the ceiling far away from all of the other structures. "ohboy... okay...." The Cheshire narrows his eyes, takes a breath, and leaps away from the wall. A simple rod appears in the air between him and the target and he grabs onto it, bringing his leap into a controlled swing and kicks at the first target, letting his foot press against the beam, and then kicks off away from it to head towards another one of the targets. Like the previous time, he materializes a handhold in the air to guide him, only this time he overestimates his target and ends up overshooting it-- "Crap!" he says, losing his concentration and, with that, losing the flow of the moment. He flies towards the wall and hastily brings up another handhold so that he keeps from smashing into the wall completely, but does bump it. He pants, holding on to the floating handhold, feet planted on the wall. "---sorry..." Amanda shakes her head lightly. "Don't apologize. You haven't hurt or offended me. You've simply slipped. Get up. Keep going. Clock's ticking." And, for emphasis, she holds up a cell phone with its stopwatch app running... The youth's eyes widen, and the hand support vanishes as he pushes off from the wall, activating his levitation. Carrying the momentum, his levitation allows him to make it to the next target, at which he swipes with his claws, negating his levitation and falling like a rock towards the ground. At first it seems like he's going to splatter due to another lost concentration but it comes from an inspiration- before his feet hit the ground, a purple trampoline materializes, which converts his momentum upwards and at an angle. However, this time he is also going to miss hitting the target that floats in the middle of the ceiling. But before he passes the target by, a purple glowing tennis racquet with an extra-long neck appears at his hand and he swats away at the target just as he starts coming down. The racquet fades and another handhold appears, this one he uses to swing himself upwards again, bounce off the wall and leap towards another target. As he moves, he starts getting into the flow of things and, although hesitantly, starts getting the hang of the course, approaching each target from different angles and using different methods to hit them--- one of them even gets swept by his tail. "Better," Amanda says as the kid rebounds and starts seriously trying. The ceiling target looks like it's not initially inclined to accept the racquet swat in lieu of a physical hit, but, a second or two after Keith passes it, it winks out. Perhaps the sorceress was feeling generous for his first try. The tail shot even gets a "Nice!" from her. When he finally lands, she taps the stopwatch app and nods non-committally. "Not bad," she says finally. "For a first try." The cat pants, staying in his crouched position for a few seconds before standing up "Man.. that's so hard... I got disoriented several times there..." he says, rubbing the back of his neck. Amanda chuckles and nods. "Yes, I saw. But you rebounded. That's the main thing. I think that's going to be a major exercise for you, for a while, though. The obstacle course. Eventually, we'll up the difficulty and add distractions." "Alright... I just hope I don't bomb. I've never seen anything like that course before" he says. Having spent months picking on gangsters on foot, he hasn't really had a chance to become acquainted with the more insane kinds of battles in which metas and mutants often had to get involved. Wait'll she starts adding moving targets on him. Amanda pads over to him, now, nodding lightly. "All the more reason to add it to your repertoire," she says. "The point of the obstacle course is more than just speed and accuracy when hitting the little floating disks. It's about thinking outside the box and your full capabilities. In order to hit many of those targets, you had to conjure pathways to get there. With others, you had to move fluidly from one action to another without pause because your targets were so close together. A good martial artist can take down a bunch of back-alley thugs and be rightly enough called a hero for doing it. But, those of us touched by magic in any way often end up dealing with stuff that's a whole lot... weirder. And wilder." "W-weirder? How wild are we talking about here?" He asks. He has not yet met a supernatural enemy... the night of his birth, perhaps, but he doesn't remember exactly what happened, only what he became. Amanda gives a lopsided smile and a shrug. "Keith, you're a walking Cheshire cat. That's pretty weird and wild to start with." Even so, it doesn't really answer his question. She conjures a simple shield-box and settles on it. "I'm a sorceress," she tells him, "and a mutant. My powers, although superficially similar in some ways, are quite different than yours. My experiences have been and will continue to be very different than yours. But, in the past month alone I have faced down acid-spitting hunters that looked like a cross between the Queen in Alien and a desiccated corpse, a dozen different types of elemental imps intent on burning down an old book store, human traffickers trying to create a zoo to display mutants and metas with the most unusual or inhuman appearances, a demon overlord who decided he just didn't like my mother, and a psychopathic metamorph who thought skewering me on a steel pike and tossing me into the harbour was fun... And it's a slow month." She gives him a steady look. "If you're going to truly get into this super hero gig, you need to understand: it's dangerous. Every single person that goes into this business is some combination of cursed, crazy, or compelled. Often all three." Keith thinks about this. By comparison, his experiences had been tamer. Including the enormous Kree robot, or whatever it was that Captain Marvel called it. It would have been foolish to say he wasn't nervous, even potentially scared. But he had run into that pizza parlor last night when it was covered in flames. He had run into an inferno to help a firefighter rescue an unconscious woman before the whole building collapsed. He had done his best to stop Electro before he could blow people to bits-- by proxy. If he hadn't been there, what would have happened? And what other events in the future would be different, if there were no Cheshire cat? "I'm not the strongest," he answers, after thinking, "Nor the fastest. Nor the smartest nor the most powerful." His answer is slow, deliberate, as if he is assembling the thoughts as he speaks them, "But the thing is...I don't think I could live with myself if I walked away. It gets dangerous, but if I'm not there, there's defenseless people it could get dangerous for, instead of me. I at least have a chance of dealing with it better. Maybe even help stop... whatever it is at the time." Amanda flips a hand, pointing at him and smiling. "Compelled," she identifies him. She flashes a teasing grin, "with only a little side of crazy. All the best are." She grows sober, now. "I'm not saying you're going to face all the craziness I have," she tells him. "It may be that some ancient god has taken a shine to you and the worst you'll face throughout the rest of your career will be no different than what you've already seen. But, odds are, as you grow and change and challenge the status quo, other gods will take note of you, learn your name, and send more and more interesting things your way -- interesting in a Chinese proverb sort of way." Oh, and when she says 'gods', she's speaking metaphorically. The woman isn't really much of a theist of any type. She's seen too many masquerading as gods, that aren't, to really believe. Are there greater powers than her out there? Oh, hell yes. Are any of them truly divine? She's yet to meet one. Her smile returns. "So, in anticipation of all of that sort of fun, we're going to train you up as well as we can. Just remember, though: Only you know how your powers truly work and what their full extents may be at any given time -- and they will change over time as your strength and stamina improves. Trust that. Use that. And above all always use your imagination." "Thank you," he says with great emphasis "... but you must let me do something for you in return. Anything, really. I don't feel right being trained without doing something in return for my instructor..." he says. Compelled. Yessir. "Even if it's cleaning your windows. I do windows." He says, with a grin. Again, Amanda laughs, the sound light and amused. "I will definitely keep that in mind," she grins. After all, who really likes doing windows? Nevertheless, she nods. "We'll work out something," she tells him. Her hand flips in a light circle, "Something adequately... apprentice-like." And when a sorceress says 'apprentice', she knows what she's talking about. "For now, just work on hitting your targets. Set some up for yourself -- use tin cans or newspapers or whatever you can find. They don't have to be fancy; they just have to be functional. And putting them in place should be as difficult as hitting them, for the most part. Consider that part of the process. And make sure you switch them up from time to time so you don't get bored or too accustomed to doing things only one way." "Setting them up would be easier for me than hitting them," he says. He pushes off the floor and floats upwards effortlessly, but slowly. There isn't the momentum he had when he was bouncing from the walls. "Can't levitate in combat, at least not without some momentum and something to bounce off first. If I start levitation with momentum, I can't control where I'm going, I just shoot straight in that direction and I have to turn it off to stop... that's why I did the trampoline thing." By this point, he has reached the ceiling and he turns himself upside down, so that he appears to be walking on the ceiling, but he is only levitating. "I could grab some tape, tin cans and string, and hang them from the ceiling at different heights and whatnot... what do you think?" Amanda nods lightly. "Sure. That'd work. If you're really feeling creative, set up some swivel dummies, even." She conjures the illusion of a stick man with targets for hands that spin when hit, to show him what she means. "And, if it helps any, I started off by levitating, rather than flying. The trick is to ricochet -- always make sure you can turn your body around sufficiently to relaunch." A beat. She grins. "Of course, a trampoline works." He just mightn't be able to conjure that quickly in a fight. "Oh, I can't fly, really. Just levitate. If I could fly, I wouldn't be climbing walls, I'd be zooming all over the place like Booster does." he says that with a hint of wistfulness in his voice "It must feel wonderful!" Again, Amanda chuckles. "My flying isn't significantly different than levitating," she tells him. "In fact, it's just an extension of the same spell, but with a bit of momentum added. I can't zip around like Superman, by any means; I get tired if I'm aloft for too long." That's why she learned to 'port and create portals. She does concede, however, "but, yes. There's a certain freedom in it." Oh... So, it's time for a Magic 101 lesson. Good thing she's had all that practice with the X-kids for that. Amanda considers the question. "I tend to think of magic as the ability affect reality in non-relativistic ways. There are many schools of thought as to how that actually happens -- but at the end of the day most of them at some point boil it down to the imposition of your will on the fabric of reality within your sphere of influence. For most magic users, spells and rituals are how we achieve that. They're really a sort of 'short-cut'. You can effectively think-do. What you think, becomes reality. But, for most of us, that's a little beyond our reach. We need some sort of way to quickly establish the level of focus and energy necessary to create what we want. Spells are a way we can do that." The cat takes this in, and hmms. "That's interesting... to make my powers work I have to will them. For the objects, I have to keep focused on them or they vanish... so I guess in a way, I am doing that in some... bizarrely specific, twisted way. I don't know what these constructs are made of, though..." he says, lowering himself to the floor. "They've got weight, they've got mass, they can hurt... they can be elastic. But I've got no clue what it is that I make them out of. Except they're purple and they glow." "Magic," Amanda says with a light shrug. Amusingly enough, most of her magic manifests with a purplish colour, too, when she's not working a specific illusion. So, to her? Yeah. It's all magic. "Their specific constitution beyond that isn't really significant unless there's something specifically preventing it... or so I've found." "Man, there's so much I don't know yet." He grins "Thank you for taking all this time to do this... you're probably sick of newbies to magic pestering you with inane questions. That' why I said...." and a little purple squeegee materializes in his hand "Windows!" Amanda laughs. "There's a school for the gifted I've taught at," she says with a shrug. "You're only treading over lessons I've already written and given several times." And it's not like she's taught him anything about her family's magical legacy, particularly. " "Like I said... We'll work something out." "School for the gifted. That sounds neat. I always envision genius-level people when I hear the word 'gifted'... I have a hard time putting 'can make purple anvils out of thin air' in the same category." The Cheshire cat grins. Then he looks over and goes to a crate, which he opens and takes something out. It's a bottle of water. Sparkling, and fresh. "I had dinner at Patrick's place the other day and I took some of the unopened stuff home... would you like a drink?" Amanda shakes her head. "I'm good. Thanks, though." She stands up, now, her purple box shield-construct disappearing with a wave of her hand. "Actually, Cat, I need to be getting back. I think I've given you quite a bit to think on for the next little while. Work at what we've discussed and perhaps we'll set up another time for the next lesson, hmm?" "Wax on, wax off. Don't worry, I'll be a good kitty and practice," he grins. "I didn't let my Sifu down, and I promise I won't let you down either. I should probably go and do my routes to make sure Callahan's gang isn't trying to get back together after the drug bust. I might use them as bounce targets." he winks. Amanda flashes a grin. "Do that. Just don't get yourself in trouble, okay? Though, if you do, I'm only a stone's call away." She makes a few quick arcane gestures and speaks softly. A purple-ringed portal appears before her. Giving the cat a final wave, she steps through, back into a very nice looking apartment. As soon as she's through, it winks out, leaving him to his own devices once more. Category:Log